The question

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Bill Nye

Science communicator and television presenter

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I was working on 747 hydraulic systems, and my friends pressured me to enter a Steve Martin look-alike contest. I did not look like him, but I thought I understood what Martin was driving at. After I won, I started doing standup. I would work at the drawing board during the day, take a nap, and then do standup at night.

ASME, ASME, 6 February 2014 source ↗

Others on this question

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Ursula K. Le Guin Novelist, poet and essayist
But when people say, Did you always want to be a writer?, I have to say no! I always was a writer. I didn’t want to be a writer and lead the writer’s life and be glamorous and go to New York. I just wanted to do my job writing, and to do it really well.
Recorded John Wray, The Paris Review, 2013 source ↗
Anne Enright Novelist and short-story writer
When I was seven I wanted to be a nun. When I was eight, I wanted to be a boy so that I could be anything I wanted. Also, of course, I wanted to be Samantha in Bewitched.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 September 2024 source ↗

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